Three of the four most fatal cancers are caused by a protein known as Ras; either because it mutates or simply because it ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ras has proven an elusive target for ...

Two Kansas State University biochemists have discovered a family of proteins that could lead to better treatments for Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogenic bacterium that can cause more than 60,000 potentially life-t ...

(Phys.org) —The Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has claimed more than 900 lives since February and has infected thousands more. Countries such as Nigeria and Liberia have declared health emergencies, ...

Like human societies—think New York City—bacterial colonies have immense diversity among their inhabitants, often generated in the absence of specific selection pressures, according to a paper published ahead of print ...

Sometimes biology is cruel. Sometimes simply a one-letter change in the human genetic code is the difference between health and a deadly disease. But even though doctors and scientists have long studied disorders ...

You know how your fingers wrinkle up in the bath? The outer layer of your skin absorbs water and swells up, forming ridges – but quickly returns to its old state when dry. Two physicists, Professor Roland ...

(Phys.org) —Wolbachia are intracellular bacteria that infect invertebrates at pandemic levels, including insects that cause such devastating diseases as Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and malaria. While Wolbachia-based ...

Coating medical supplies with an antimicrobial material is one approach that bioengineers are using to combat the increasing spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ...

As part of a "Lazarus Project" to try to bring the Australian gastric-brooding frog back from extinction a UNSW-led team has succeeded in producing early stage cloned embryos containing the DNA of the frog, ...

As large organisms, trees face some remarkable challenges, particularly regarding long-distance transport and communication. In addition to moving water and nutrients from their roots to their leaves, they ...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have figured out the three-dimensional shape of the protein responsible for creating unique bonds within the cell wall of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. The bonds make ...

(Phys.org)—As the cold and flu season makes its annual visit, a team of researchers, using Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, continue to complete a detailed map of the human adenovirus—one of several ...

(Phys.org)—Biologists have teamed up with mechanical engineers from the The University of Texas at Dallas to conduct cell research that provides information that may one day be used to engineer organs.

Scientists from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) describe how natural selection also occurs at the cellular level, and how our body's tissues and organs strive to retain the best cells in their ranks in ...